In 2010, a team based at COHDS and led by Dr. Steven High assessed the current state of knowledge in oral and public history in relation to new media, identify emerging trends, and consider the public policy implications of our findings. The results of this project can be found in the attached report and in the section Oral Historian's Digital Toolbox.
Ethics is at the heart of oral history theory and practice. Oral history encourages us to rethink dominant academic research practice from a mode of knowing about to knowing with. Who controls the research process clearly matters. Collaboration is an ongoing process of dialogue and sharing. Here you will find templates of consent forms and interview guides as well as the Montreal Life Stories general training guide.
In transcribing our interviews, we lose the orality almost immediately thus shoring the narratives of much of their meaning. Stories Matter is a software created by the Centre for Oral History and Digital Storytelling. It offers oral historians an alternative to transcription. Stories matter allows us to clip, index and export audio and video recordings – and so it represents a real alternative to transcription. It is also free and can be downloaded online.
Training is at the core of our mission. As a result, we offer a wide-range of free training workshops, seminars, and roundtables for affiliates and the general public. COHDS team members also conduct a large number of workshops remotely to oral historians around the world. Here you will find our online webinars as well as information on upcoming and past training workshops.
In order to facilitate the production and post-production treatment of interviews for your oral history documentation, COHDS’s laboratories have at their disposal a vast amount of softwares.
